Love Letters
by sigmalied
Summary: An affectionate correspondence between Tevos and Aria.


**A/N:** It was suggested to me that I write a letter from Tevos to Aria, sent posthumously in the event of Tevos's death in ME1. While I may do this in the future, I also wanted to write a correspondence from the timeline in which she survives. The letters are dated post-Reaper War, and there is a subtle hint for GBTQ's sequel in here as well.

This was, for a very short time, _two_ chapters long to emphasize the brevity of Aria's response, but I've decided to condense it into a single chapter.

* * *

Love Letters

* * *

Darling,

You sometimes ask me, in jest, what I do on Janiris. My answer has historically been that I do very little aside from speaking at cultural galas on the occasional year. This is the truth, but I tend not to mention that I often think of you come evening. I begin to lament our distance; a feeling which confronts me not through an abrupt surge, but through quiet encroach as I dwell on all that we are—despite the strangeness—and all that we have experienced together.

Over long centuries of life I have voraciously consumed literature about a great many topics. I've peered into innumerable lives, comprehended the texts for strict professions, delved deeply into philosophical conjecture and ancient history. But none have ever described such an individual as you. They had no notion of you, no imaginative breadth wide enough to have conjured up a narrative about such a being. This was why I was so grossly underprepared when I first met you. I had no literature to consult, no prior-existing references. And I do not mean there were no accounts depicting the worryingly ambitious. I mean there were no accounts whose prose or poetry effectively encapsulated the intensity and nature of the affection I developed for someone like you.

Even if this is never to be seen by anyone's eyes save for your own, that is acceptable, for there is a peculiar votive flame inside me that insists you are to remain forever elusive to the people of this universe. Perhaps you are that flame yourself, left behind in me by our unions, advocating for your own incalculable purpose to remain undefined. But you possess me in a way that encourages me to defiantly attempt populating the void where no literature exists.

I think of how you drape yourself with effortless beauty over my furniture, and how all the light in the room conspires to hold you in its highest esteem. I think of your arrogant sneer, gilded by the simple shape and demeanor of the lips it sits upon. I think of clutching at your shoulders as I hold you over me, feeling beneath my fingernails a seemingly impenetrable surface shielded by confidence and cunning and power. I think of enveloping you, how all your prowess concentrates and culminates in your wonderful vigor. I always find myself aching for you, even, and especially, in the throes of your attention.

I want to see you in my clothes again, sharing between us intimacy of protection and warmth. I crave to see my rings on your hands, impressing hypothetical others with the uxorious manner in which I celebrate you. I want you in my bed, where I may press my lips to your shoulder and encircle your waist with my arms as we rest.

And while boastful, you have never relied on words where actions may succinctly convey. Your voice and hands are gentle, calm, and graceful; almost beyond time itself in their certainty, their premonition of what will come as if you have lived a thousand times. You look at me and I glimpse the reality of you—so firmly rooted in your incredible life and ideas, so much that you appear to defy the mortality that binds you. And so it breaks my heart with indescribable euphoria when you have overextended yourself. When your gaze clouds and your skin delicately flushes with inebriation. When your voice climbs, in anger or in pleasure, against its natural composure and exquisitely falters.

Whenever we are together I obsess over fulfilling all the vacancy within you, wherever I may find it, no matter what dreary experience I might find myself nestled beside. I see the pains you have endured and the remarkable people who won your tenderness, and I am humbled by the unexpected magnitude of these memories, how you live your life with such profuse meaning and care despite how you deride sentimentality.

Yet, you have never fooled me. I know what you are and I know what you do. But even you cannot deny that you do less of it now, that you act with conviction in place of conquest. This is why I adore you. The flexibility of your wit, the dynamism of your growth. You are not jailed by what you were yesterday, and always do you hunger for the new and improved, never afraid to cast off the obsolete even at the expense of consistency. This, I firmly believe, is what defines ingenuity. I think your home hasn't seen such a mind or temperament at its helm in millennia.

I know you do not wish to hear this, but you have grown softer with age. And I believe I am not the only one who benefits from it—but also an entire nation of people who rally around you as their supreme example. A people who may come to realize the value of partnership and negotiation, just as you have, and improve upon their society in ways history shall not comprehend.

You are beautiful as a sun is; touching all who witnesses it with an everlasting light that exposes bare nature and so fiercely evaluates it. And looking upon you only yields an unexpected obscurity, when you eclipse yourself with the very light you emit. What can anyone do but shield their eyes and shrink in submission? Only those who would risk blindness can hope to see you as I have.

This is why I consider stepping into the maw of eternity with you, why I have amassed enough confidence to tell you now. I think we are better together than we are apart. I think we are tempering, enlightening forces on one another's lives. Figures of unwavering support that may happily agree or vehemently disagree, but to always elevate the health and success of the other, and never to demean.

I am bolder in my judgements because of your influence. I am now unafraid of those dark quivering truths in both myself and the world that surrounds me because of you. I am a steadier hand for my people; measured, mediating, but unyielding. I have stood at the precipice of unfathomable demise and emerged from it with the faculty to guide my people through the bleakest period in all our history. While I credit my own developments for these unlikely achievements, I also credit you with utmost certainty. You play the catalyst that inspires my self-reflection, my deeper analysis of the grayer shades of reality, and my willful evolution into someone who can contend with you throughout all the remaining years of our lives.

And so it is my hope that you will not be overly surprised when I ask a tremendous favor of you one day. It feels as inevitable as the changing seasons, a perennial pining of my heart that I have disclosed to you before. As I said previously, it is my deepest belief that we are more effective together than apart, and I begin to long for—at the very least—one more private collaboration between us.

With affection,

 _T._

 **.**

 **-][-**

 **.**

Regarding your letter,

There was once a time when I would fill the inboxes of girls I wanted or had with well-worded adorations. I received them too, more often than would I send them. Of course, none of those girls were as old as you, nor had they read even five percent of the dusty tomes you've pored over, so you have an advantage that should be immediately pointed out.

You are aggravatingly literate enough to sound more profound than glib. Because of this I have read your letter in its entirety, twice now, and plan to indefinitely archive it. I know well the wickedness of poets and politicians, and our susceptibility to them. Do not exploit my feelings for you, sweetheart. There will be hell to pay if you're being dishonest.

But in the meantime, ask me whenever you're ready. I'll have an answer.

 _A._


End file.
